Civic Activism Helps to Polish Arena’s Image

When Democrats from across the country gathered recently in Los Angeles to announce the party’s decision to bring its 2000 convention here, City Councilwoman Rita Walters was on hand to welcome the group--not just to Los Angeles, but to her home turf.

Mayor Richard Riordan already had boasted of the developments transforming downtown, but Walters put those projects--including the new Staples Center, where the convention will be held--into finer perspective.

“All those things you heard about, including this center,” she said, nodding over her left shoulder to the growing building behind her, “are not just in Los Angeles. They’re in my district.”

What a difference two years make. In 1997, when the sports arena was the object of fierce debate in Los Angeles, Walters was among its most passionate opponents, arguing against the use of city money to subsidize the project and generally dismissing its importance. Today, with the center just six months from its scheduled opening, Walters has become one of its champions. It is a transformation that is typical at City Hall, where Staples Center officials once were objects of suspicion but increasingly are admired for fulfilling their promises.

“They’ve built some credibility over here,” said one City Hall insider. “They got off to a terrible start, but they paid attention to details and delivered on their promises, and now they’re seen as a much better neighbor.”

Many officials attribute that turnaround to Timothy J. Leiweke, Staples Center president, who has emerged as a key player not only in the arena’s management but also in the broader mission to rebuild downtown and restore luster to the city’s long-tarnished national image.

In an interview last week, Leiweke acknowledged that center officials had gotten off on the wrong foot with municipal leaders but said he and his colleagues are now determined to play a constructive role in the city’s future.

“Maybe we were a little, I don’t want to use the word ‘arrogant,’ but, well, we’ve taken a different tone,” he said. “We can have a big impact in a positive way on the city of Los Angeles, and we’re determined to do that.”

In fact, the arena’s presence now shows up in an array of downtown missions: The center is backing an inner-city arts program, sponsored ice skating for inner-city children at Pershing Square and is focusing its hiring on workers who come from the area surrounding downtown.

It has chipped in $1 million to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, notwithstanding that one of the Staples Center’s main investors, Fox Corp., has little love for Disney. And the center is turning itself over to the Democratic Party for two months--a gift worth roughly $5 million--notwithstanding that its two principal investors, Fox’s Rupert Murdoch and Union Pacific’s Phil Anschutz, are die-hard conservative Republicans who relish the idea of their center getting international publicity but grit their teeth at hosting a bunch of Democrats.

The center’s resurgent popularity has not smoothed all waters. It remains at odds with local landowners and is driving hard bargains as it tries to scoop up property for parking in the area.

In case after case, the Community Redevelopment Agency and the arena’s developers have insisted that land around the center is worth about $40 a square foot and have refused to take in property owners as partners in the site’s development. Frustrated landowners have gotten their own appraisals, arguing that their land is worth much more. Most claim it is valued at $100 per square foot or more.

So far, one case has gone to a jury, and it sided with the owners, a Korean couple who had 6,600 square feet. The couple won and were awarded $105 per square foot for their land.

“They’re playing pretty rough in this situation,” said Roger Sullivan, a lawyer representing a number of the landowners. “I expect a lot of these cases to go to trial.”

While those issues continue to simmer, the center and its managers generally enjoy a positive image in and around city government.

It was not always so.

In 1997, when the proposed arena was before the City Council, its backers managed to annoy just about everyone. First, Walters and City Councilman Joel Wachs raised a series of questions about the proposed contract between the city and the arena, wondering aloud about whether it was appropriate to use city money in support of a project whose principal backer was a Denver-based billionaire.

Faced with that challenge, arena backers compounded their problems by refusing to make public the proposed deal, fueling anxiety about what they were hiding. Their troubles were amplified further because Mayor Richard Riordan, who made no secret of his support for the project, nevertheless was consigned to the sidelines because he owns a restaurant just a few blocks away from the arena’s site, giving him a conflict of interest in the matter.

Steven Soboroff, a real estate expert and unpaid Riordan advisor, handled the matter for the mayor, but his role in the debate both helped and hurt the center. Soboroff brought enormous expertise to the project and cleared it through every major hurdle; but he has aspirations to be mayor, as does Wachs.

The result was that the arena debate became enmeshed in mayoral politics, making a controversial project even more difficult.

Today, Leiweke acknowledges that the center got caught in the political mill and that its staff was “maybe a little combative,” but says he is determined to steer a more conciliatory course from here on out.

“We deem the opportunity too great to be caught up in petty politics,” he said.

Some of the center’s progress in building goodwill has been the result of careful symbolism. The arts program is a popular notion that will supplement inner-city elementary school curricula, and the contribution to the Music Center allows arena officials to join the civic elite that has lined up behind that project.

But the Staples Center’s bigger gains have been substantive. It promised to attract permanent tenants, and it has ended up with not one but three major sports teams: the Lakers, Clippers and Kings. That makes it the only major arena in the country to be home to three full-time, big-league teams. It also has a yet-to-be-named arena football team signed up to play.

The arena got the national figure skating championships, and it has signed top acts for several events. Riordan envisions it anchoring the city’s millennium celebrations, when Staples intends to put on Jackson Browne and the Eagles.

Its real coup, however, came in nabbing the Democratic presidential nominating convention in 2000. No one close to that process believes the Democratic National Committee would have looked twice at Los Angeles without the prospect of hosting the event in a brand-new, state-of-the-art center.

Particularly compelling was the personal pitch that Leiweke made to DNC delegates when they visited Los Angeles. He combined a serious appeal with the requisite gift-giving the delegates have come to expect--each one got a Kings jersey and tickets to the Lakers’ home opener as proof that the center would be done and open in time for the convention.

When the Democrats agreed to bring their show to Los Angeles and the center, Leiweke and others credited Staples management with having carried much of the load. Next summer, they will get their reward as the Staples logo is broadcast worldwide and Los Angeles hosts its first presidential nominating convention since 1960, when John F. Kennedy was selected as the Democratic nominee.